1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a microscope apparatus including a projection means for projecting an image within the view of a microscope from an image display means.
2. Description of the Related Art
In microsurgery, it is demanded that an image of the affected area of a patient during surgery should be recorded on a VTR or the like in order to confirm the affected area after his or her operation, explain the operation to the patient, etc. Such a technique is disclosed in, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,835,266. This patent discloses picking up an image of a surgical microscope by splitting part of pencils of light of the surgical microscope by a light pencil splitting means and then guiding the split light pencil to an image pickup means.
Microsurgery has recently been performed using a microscope and an endoscope together. In this surgery, it is demanded that an operator should observe both a microscopic image and an endoscopic image at the same time without taking his or her eyes off the eyepieces of the microscope and endoscope. Such a technique is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,088,154 and 6,266,182. These Patents disclose that a projection means for guiding an image from an image display means is provided close to a position to form a final image of a microscopic optical system.
In a microsurgery using both a surgical microscope and an endoscope, an operator has to pick up an image of each of these two observation apparatuses.
To record both a microscopic image and an endoscopic image on a VTR in the apparatuses disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,088,154 and 6,266,182, a light pencil splitting means is added to a final image-forming point to split part of pencils of light, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,835,266. The light pencil split by the light pencil splitting means is recorded on the VTR as a microscopic image. On the other hand, part of an endoscopic image guided to the neighborhood of the final image-forming point is (electrically) split and the split image is recorded on another VTR as an endoscopic image.
As recording of surgery, it is necessary to know what operation an operator is performing under a surgery microscope and what blind spot the operator is observing through an endoscope. In other words, it is desirable that there be a correlation in time between the recorded microscopic and endoscopic images.
In order to achieve the above correlation with the apparatuses disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,088,154 and 6,266,182, an operator has to start the recording of a microscopic image and that of an endoscopic image simultaneously and find a correlation in time between them while seeing a counter after the operation. However, this method has a problem that not only a plurality of recording and reproduction devices are required but also a procedure for seeing an image in itself is very complicated.